Mental hospital to honour thousands of ‘forgotten souls’ who were cremated
They were dubbed the “forgotten souls” — the cremated remains of thousands of people who came through the doors of Oregon’s state mental hospital, died there and whose ashes were abandoned inside 3,500 copper urns.
Discovered a decade ago at the decrepit Oregon State Hospital, where One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed, the remains became a symbol of the state’s — and the U.S.’s — dark history of treating the mentally ill.
A research effort to unearth the stories of those who moved through the hospital’s halls, and to reunite the remains with surviving relatives, takes centre stage Monday as officials dedicate a memorial to those once-forgotten patients.
“No one wants to be laid to rest without some kind of acknowledgment that they were here, that they contributed, that they lived,” said state Senate President Peter Courtney.
Between 1913 and 1971, more than 5,300 people were cremated at the hospital. Most were patients at the mental institution, but some died at local hospitals, the state tuberculosis hospital, and a state penitentiary.
Since the urns were found by lawmakers on a tour of the hospital in 2005, 183 have been claimed. The 3,409 that remain and have been identified are listed in a searchable online database.
They came from different backgrounds, for different reasons.
Some stayed just days before they died, others for nearly their entire lives. They came from every state except Alaska and Hawaii. Nearly 1,000 were born in 44 countries.
Some patients spent a lifetime at the hospital for conditions like depression and bipolar disorder that, in modern times, are treated on an outpatient basis.
“At the time, they just put them in a safe place and treated them with what they knew to treat them,” said Sharon Tucker, who led the twoyear research project.
Records are sparse, even for people who lived for decades inside the walls. Some suffered from severe delusions, others from physical deformities. Some seemed to be institutionalized because their families just didn’t know what to do with them.
But what does survive is a window not only into who they were, but the time in which they lived.